Teaching English Language

Developed in England and Scotland during the Anglo Saxon era, English has now spread vast beyond the boundaries of United Kingdom and has now become the most dominant language in the world.

According to a survey, approximately 375 million people speak English as their native language making it the third most natively spoken language in the world after Chinese and Spanish. However when its native and non native percentage is combined, it becomes the most commonly spoken language in the world. While it is the official language in many countries, in some it is spoken is a second language.

It is the language used in the international media, being the only medium that connects people of different countries together not only that but it is the national language of the United Nations and many other organizations as well. It is also the commonly used language in sciences as it is said that the 95% of the scientific articles written, are in English. 

Modern English through eras of changes has become a really simple language to understand, read, write and speak. Teaching some one English, however, is a gradual process and in order to make a person fluent in it, one has to follow a particular pattern following steps starting from the very beginning.

As said earlier it is a very essential language to learn. Countries where it is the native language and is a compulsion to learn the process of learning English starts at a young age and proceeds slow from low to high level standards. For an adult however who intends to learn English and that too in a short span of time it requires a bit more of an effort.

Let’s take a look at some basic tools one must teach the student to make him learn the language completely:

Teaching The Basics

Let’s begin from the start. To teach someone who does not know anything about English, the basics must be taught first. These include the alphabets and few basic words.

To teach the alphabets, one must demonstrate a way to write them and teach the sound that the alphabet produces. Then make the student practice and learn how to write these alphabets and the sounds these alphabets produce.

Once the student has learnt about the sounds of alphabets individually, start teaching them about words. When a student knows what sound is attached to which alphabet the construction of words becomes easy. A student might make mistakes initially. But make them practice.

Teach them simple words such as apple, cat, banana and etc by showing pictures and demonstrating perfect examples. Also tell them words that represent common actions such as eating, sleeping crying etc.Remember, at this point what important is for the student to learn the very basics of English vocabulary, words very commonly used do not complicate it for the student.

After the basics, teach them about vowels and the consonants.

Now move to construction of sentences and clauses. For that the student must be taught how to connect the actions to words. Once the student is aware of the meaning if the words it becomes easy to do so.

The learning of English language is incomplete without the learning of grammar. The initial of the grammar starts by teaching the student about the noun, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. A student must be extensively taught about these. This is the basis for the construction of sentences.

Proceeding, teach the student about the basic three tenses; the present, past and future tense. Once the student is aware of them teach them about the further branches present and past tense namely the present/past perfect, present/ perfect continuous and present/perfect continuous tenses.

After the tenses, teach them about the articles (a, an, the) and the prepositions. Teach them where either of these three must be used and how.

The above just sums up the basics, if the student is taught well and in steps and is made to practice well, the English language becomes an extremely easy language to learn and to teach. For further improvement and for further learning, one must continue reading the English literature and important text regarding the language.